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WASHINGTON, Sept. 9, 2011 – The morning of the 9/11 attacks, then
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was hosting a breakfast meeting
at the Pentagon, warning members of the House Armed Services
Committee about the dangers of major cuts to the defense and
intelligence budgets.
A twisted piece of metal he picked up on the morning of 9/11 from the grounds of the Pentagon at the American Airlines Flight 77 crash site serves as a constant reminder to former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld about the need for continued vigilance in standing up to terrorists. DOD photo by Donna Miles |
His new book, “Known and Unknown,” recounts Rumsfeld's
foreboding comments.
“Sometime within the coming
period,” he told his guests, “an event somewhere in the
world will be sufficiently shocking that it will remind the
American people and their representatives in Washington how
important it is for us to have a strong national defense.”
Just as the meeting was wrapping up, that event began to
unfold as a group of al-Qaida members launched the largest
terror attack ever to take place on American soil.
Rumsfeld's senior military assistant, Navy Vice Adm. Edmund
P. Giambastiani Jr., passed him a note to tell him that a
plane had crashed into New York City's World Trade Center,
the former defense secretary recalled during a recent
interview with The Pentagon Channel and American Forces
Press Service.
Then news arrived of the second World
Trade Center attack.
“At that point, it clearly was
not an accident,” Rumsfeld said.
Rumsfeld was
watching television images of the attacks with his
intelligence briefer when he felt the Pentagon building
shake. He bounded down the outer “E” ring hallway to find
out what had happened, encountering such heavy smoke that he
had to go downstairs and ultimately, outside the building.
“There was smoke and flames and people ... coming out of
the building and being pulled out of the building, wounded,”
he said.
With first responders not yet on the scene,
Rumsfeld joined others tending to the wounded. But as
emergency workers arrived, he headed back to his office to
communicate with President George W. Bush and Vice President
Dick Cheney, and “making decisions about what needed to be
done at the Pentagon and elsewhere at the Department of
Defense.”
Before reentering the building, Rumsfeld
bent over to pick up one of the thousands of pieces of metal
strewn across the ground near the crash site. Ten years
later, it sits mounted on a wooden plaque in his Washington
office, an ever-present reminder of that day that changed
America, and especially, its military.
Rumsfeld
recalled this week the chain of events that began
immediately after the attacks. Not knowing if another attack
was on the way, authorities grounded all commercial
aircraft. Military aircraft were sent into the skies with
orders to shoot down any aircraft that didn't comply and
appeared to pose a threat.
“That was an enormous
decision for a president [and] for a vice president to pass
that instruction down, and for the pilot of those aircraft,”
Rumsfeld said. “Fortunately, it didn't have to be done....
None of our military pilots had to shoot at an American
aircraft filled with innocent people because it was headed
for a target that was of importance to the United States.”
Based on continuity-of-operations plans developed during
the 1980s, Rumsfeld was among the Cabinet members expected
to move to secure locations outside Washington in the event
of an attack. Instead, he sent Deputy Defense Secretary Paul
D. Wolfowitz, so he could remain at the Pentagon.
Despite a building still smoking and burning, Rumsfeld
called a news briefing that evening at the Pentagon. The
goal was two-fold, he explained. The American people needed
to know what had taken place at the Pentagon. But he had a
message for the terrorists who had masterminded the attacks,
too.
“I was convinced it would not be a good thing
for the terrorists to believe that they had shut down the
Department of Defense [and] the Pentagon, so we made a
decision to have a press briefing there,” he said. “I
indicated at that briefing that the Department of Defense
would be operating that night and the next morning and we
would not shut the place down.”
Even as fire marshals
urged evacuation, Rumsfeld and his staff of essential
personnel remained at their Pentagon posts.
Rumsfeld
admitted he was surprised to hear that al-Qaida had
successfully launched the attack from within the United
States. The Defense Department had always been organized and
trained to deal with external threats. Internal threats were
considered the domain of the FBI and state and local police.
“So what we had was a very different situation,”
Rumsfeld said. “We had an external enemy that had
successfully attacked our country, not from outside, but
from within the country.”
Bush opted to deal with the
attackers, not as common criminals or a hostile foreign
nation, but as an enemy network hostile to the United
States, Rumsfeld said.
Rumsfeld said his past
experience as a Middle East envoy for President George H. W.
Bush convinced him that when dealing with terrorists, the
attacker always has the advantage.
“They can attack
at any time, using any technique in any location, and it is
not possible to defend everywhere, at every moment of the
day or night against every conceivable type of attack,” he
said.
That, Rumsfeld said, requires going on the
offensive.
“If you were going to protect the American
people, you had to do more than try to defend,” he said.
“You had to put pressure on [terrorists] all across the
globe and make everything they do more difficult: make it
harder to raise money, harder to train, harder to talk to
each other, harder to move from place to place.
“And
only by doing that could you hope to ... protect the American
people and our interests and our friends and allies in a
reasonable way.”
Looking back, Rumsfeld said he never
imagined on 9/11 that the United States would go a full
decade without experiencing another attack on the homeland.
Of the many attempts, all were foiled, he said. But just
as other parts of the world have faced terror attacks,
Rumsfeld said he's not convinced the United States couldn't
be hit again.
“There could be a terrorist attack as
we sit here today, because it is not possible to defend
everywhere, and they only have to be right once,” he said.
“We can be right dozens of times, but if they are right
once, they have success.”
Rumsfeld recalled his major
objective at the Pentagon before 9/11: to transform the
Defense Department into a 21st-century organization better
suited to the current world.
After 9/11, Rumsfeld
said many thought that effort would have to be sidelined.
“But it turned out to be just the opposite,” he said.
“In fact, the events of September 11th provided an impetus
to transform the department.”
Rumsfeld rattled off
just a few of those sweeping changes made to posture the
military for post-9/11 threats. Large Army divisions have
been subdivided into more flexible and agile brigade combat
teams. Special operations forces, now also joined by Marine
special operators, have increased in numbers, authorities
and equipment. U.S. forces have been “rebalanced” around the
world to better deal with 21st-century challenges and
threats.
“So I feel that, rather than preventing the
department from transforming, September 11th really did
provide a sense of urgency,” Rumsfeld said. [It] “helped
people who had a traditional way of doing things recognize
that we were facing a new kind of enemy and we needed to
deal with asymmetrical threats as well as conventional
threats. And we had to be able to do it with a great deal
more skill and agility and speed.”
This
transformation, he said, has impacted the fighting force as
well. Rumsfeld, who served both in uniform and as defense
secretary before the days of the all-volunteer force, said
today's service members have a sense of pride and purpose in
serving their country in uniform.
“They all have a
dedication and a patriotism and an aspect of their
personalities that caused them to volunteer, to want to be
involved in helping to serve our country,” he said. “We have
a military that ... has been tested in battle, that is
stronger and more resilient and healthier as an armed force”
than during any previous conflict.”
The chapter of
Rumsfeld's book about 9/11 and its aftermath, “The Agony of
Surprise,” is posted on his website at www.rumsfeld.com. The
Pentagon Channel will air portions of its interview with
Rumsfeld beginning Sept. 9 and continuing through the 9/11
weekend.
By Donna Miles
American Forces Press Service
Copyright 2011
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